Mon Aug 25, 2014 at 10:13:21 AM EDT

Ye Olde Emm Ess Emm loves them some Richard McLellan, the Lansing-area attorney who is often involved in crafting policy. This morning, they ask him about our ongoing experiment in the Dunning-Kruger effect's unprecedented, unique effort to undermine your democratic right to (literally) petition government of redress of grievance. He says it's no big deal. To people who follow these things closely, this might sound familiar, because when asked about his role in Skunk Works, our benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's secret work group (funded by a slush fund, the names of donors to which were kept secret) to redraw education, he said basically the same thing.

But Lansing attorney Richard McLellan, who often is involved in such issues, said state constitutional provisions allowing citizens to petition for new laws don’t mean every proposal has to go to the ballot.

The framers, McLellan said, just “wanted people to have the right to start the (law-making) process. I get a little irritated with these Democrats who’d do exactly the same things for the same reasons” if they had the legislative majority.

It would be great if his irritation were accompanied by, you know, an example of Democrats actually doing this any time in the last three decades. But, this is the way that our democratic discourse has degenerated ... Republicans do something dastardly and incredibly underhanded that diminishes our democratic institutions because they know they wouldn't win in a fair fight and then say that Democrats would do the same thing as if that's some kind of credible excuse, and our political media just kind of sagely nods its head ... because everyone knows that BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY GUILTY.

I assume it's a foregone conclusion that the House will vote to move this thing through. If this happens, the only recourse that anyone has is to constitutionally enshrine what would be the right of the citizenry to make its own choices about how to dispose of its property*. That, in turn, will no doubt lead to a lot of hand wringing in our political media about junking up the state constitution. That, in turn, will give me the urge to drink heavily.

*--Once again, it has to be pointed out that all wildlife in the state of Michigan belongs to the people of Michigan. The act of choosing which animals are game species is not really any more controversial than the act of any property owner choosing how his stuff is managed. The party of property rights and opposing taxation on the grounds that individuals know better how to dispose of their property -- money -- than government aren't so much in favor of property rights and individuals knowing better how to dispose of their property -- wildlife -- when suits them.

Two Upper Peninsula hunters, under investigation for videotaping hunting dogs mauling a coyote, are also being investigated for running down a coyote with a truck, then filming the injured animal before killing it.

I am not the slightest bit interested in hearing attempts to disconnect the two by saying that coyotes and wolves are different species or that it is terribly unfair to tar every hunter with the actions of two assholes who apparently might not get punished for torturing injured animals. It's the same thing. Same god damned thing. These assholes killed coyotes for fun. There is no legitimate need to hunt wolves. You don't eat them, and if you have problem wolves, you don't punish the entire wolf population with what are essentially random killings. You deal with the problem animal. So, the only reason to hunt them is for sport, which is the same thing as killing them for fun. When you allow people to kill things for fun, this is an outcome that you can expect. Our ongoing experiment in the Dunning-Kruger effect isn't just diminishing our common sense of democracy, it is also bringing low our common humanity ... and standard-issue Lansing Bubble insider Richard McLellan gets a little irritated that you might object to that.

about resource extraction on public lands in their state -- nobody else in the other 49 states gets to have a say. It is essentially a refusal to acknowledge the "public" in public lands. I think it may come from too much inbreeding in rural communities.

and where before us trolls have a say? Would one or two around Indian River suffice, or do they have to be more widespread than that? Should folks in the lower half of the mitten, where bears are generally not found, be prohibited from having a say in bear management? Shall we go county by county?

Here's where you're dead wrong: Every animal in the state -- fish, bird, mammal, amphibian -- belongs to every citizen in the state of Michigan. So, it's a matter of how to dispose of property that belongs to all of us. That's also why we don't set rules for how big a fish has to be to be a keeper regionally. They're statewide rules because every fish belongs to every person in the state of Michigan, including people who don't fish.

The same goes for water, which is why you can't block a river that goes through your property and charge a fee to cross it, and the air ... and to a certain extent the minerals in the ground.